We were silent for the beat of one, two, three seconds.
Josh grabbed the camera, looking at the specifications. “This system operates on Wi-Fi. If the Wi-Fi’s down, nothing can transmit. Even if there are more still plugged in.”
Grace snapped first. “What the hell, Oliver? Is this like standard vacation-rental operating procedure?”
“No,” he said, hands held up in a proclamation of innocence. “It’s not, I didn’t—”
“Oh,” I said, cutting him off, “but this isn’t a rental, is it.”
He frowned, then took the camera from Josh, wrapping the cord around his hand, turning it over to examine the specifics. “I didn’t put this here. I swear. I had no idea.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “I know this house sits empty the rest of the year. That we’re the only ones ever here.” I pointed to the camera. “If that’s here, it’s just for us.”
He looked up sharply, quickly, but he didn’t erupt. Not like Brody might, or Josh. No, he was even and contained, in a way that was somehow even more unsettling. You could not get an emotional rise from him.
“What?” Hollis asked.
Finally, Oliver tipped his head to the side, in concession. “So this house sits empty. So I don’t rent it out anymore. So what? I can do what I want with it. It’s mine. I bought it off my parents years ago.”
“You came out a day early, though,” I said carefully. “You were here early, but then you left, and arrived at the house last.”
You had to be careful with your accusations here. You could state a fact, but not a guess. There were too many things we didn’t want to answer for.
So I did not say what I thought, which was: You wanted us to think you weren’t here. You made us believe you were the last to arrive.
We didn’t like to push too hard. Didn’t like to point fingers and accuse, because of all the things we weren’t sure of about one another. We knew enough: we knew that we would each leave others to die in order to save ourselves. And we thought that this spoke to something deeper, darker, within us.
It was just the beginning of countless possibilities, but it applied to each and every one of us.
“Why do you know this, Cassidy?” Oliver asked.
I jerked back, feeling the weight of his words. The fact that he was leveling a careful, subtle accusation of his own. And he wasn’t wrong. I’d gone through his things. I’d been watching.
Still, I had facts. “The rental car agreement,” I said. Not wanting to add a guess: You were seen on the pier. I’d been asking around.
He looked around the room, at the fact that the rest of the group was waiting, that right now, he had to answer for his actions, his half-truths. “I could only get a flight in the day before. And I don’t like being here alone, so I spent the first night at an inn, came back when I thought you’d be arriving—”
“Then why did you buy this place?” Hollis asked. I could feel us circling him, peeling away the lies, and I was afraid. Afraid of what I’d find at the core.
“Because it’s ours,” he said, the first sign of emotion rising. “Because it’s important that we have this place. And that it’s here whenever we need it.” He swallowed, waiting for the room to assess him. To deliver their verdict.
“But this.” He held up the camera. “This isn’t me. Why would I need this? I’m right here.”
“You swear,” Grace said, pointing to the camera. “You swear that wasn’t you.”
His face softened, eyes holding her gaze. “I swear, Grace.”
She stared back at him, and then nodded. That was how Grace operated. You had to be all in. You didn’t agree, you swore. You didn’t become friends, you pledged an allegiance. And then she trusted you. It was as simple as that. As if she believed she could read the true character of a person by the level of their commitment.
But this blind allegiance, these endless pledges—this was how we remained stuck in the past, getting absolutely nowhere. We never pressed. We were scared to dig.
“Did you know Ian was here?” I said, shattering the fragility of the moment.
The attention of the room turned toward me. Turned on me.
“What are you talking about, Cass?” Brody asked, though I hadn’t stopped looking directly at Oliver. His demeanor changed, the soft expression he’d given Grace suddenly shifting. A defensiveness. A mask he was desperately trying to slide back into place.
Now I took in the rest of the room—confusion, shock, disbelief. I seized on it.
“Ian was here, in February,” I said. “I found his jacket in the upper-floor closet, with a receipt in his pocket… So, Oliver, did you?” Did you know, did you hurt him, what did you do?
Oliver stared back, for a long, painful moment. “You seem so sure I’m the bad guy here, Cassidy. But what were you doing up in that room? Why were you even looking?”
The problem with all of us was the way our motives were tangled. Our fears, our suspicions. And how quickly an accusation could be turned around on any one of us.
But all my emotions were too close to the surface, and I couldn’t stop myself now. Everything was coming out. It was the way Ian’s laughter—real, and unguarded—could fill up the downstairs of this house. The way I could feel his presence when he entered a room, and how he always seemed to notice me, just the same. How I used to tell him everything. The memory of his face, hovered above mine. His mouth, open in a frozen scream.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “He tried to get ahold of me, and I missed it. Just a few days before he overdosed.” My hand shook as I brought it to my mouth. “I wasn’t there for him.” The truth. He needed me, and I hadn’t answered. I’d missed him, and now he was dead.
Something cracked—a tic in Oliver’s jaw. His eyes drifted closed, and he placed his hands on the table, and I thought, My god, what have you done?
“I missed him too.” Oliver raised his eyes to mine, and they were no longer defensive, but full of devastation. “He reached out to me too. To come here. And I didn’t make it in time.”
“You came here?” I asked.
“He asked me to.” We had pledged to always be there for one another. After Clara, we promised to always come—
“Jesus,” Josh cut in. “Why didn’t you say anything? We’re supposed to reach out if we need help—”
“No one would’ve been able to help!” he shouted, an unexpected outburst. He took a deep breath, then sat in the nearest chair at the table, like he was giving up. “I couldn’t help him either. But it wasn’t me. Please believe that.” He was searching our eyes, as he had searched Grace’s. But I wasn’t sure what he was asking for.
None of us spoke, waiting for him to say more.
Oliver stared out the back window. “He sent me an email, to my work address—I guess he looked it up, to make sure I got it…. He said he needed my help. That he was heading here—he said it was an emergency, and I told him the code. Thought that was the end of it, but then he emailed again, asked me to meet him here.” He shook his head. “No, he told me to. Come to The Shallows. It’s an emergency. That’s what he said.”
He took a deep breath, even as I realized I was holding mine. This was the Oliver I had first met, before high school. Unsure and quiet. His voice was barely over a whisper. “When I got here, he was gone.”
I didn’t grasp the depth of his confession, the way he was pleading with us to understand. The way he was inching toward something instead.
“I was too late to help him,” he said.
The room was eerily silent, as we tried to process what he was saying.
“Here?” Brody asked, looking around the room. “He overdosed here?”
Oliver dropped his head into his hands and nodded.
“Oh my god,” Grace said.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t quite take it all in. Ian, here. Ian, gone.
I pictured him alone, in this empty house. Deciding, after all this time, it had finally been enough. “You found him dead?” I finally asked, voice just barely over a whisper.
“Yes,” he said, head still down, like he didn’t want to say it.
“What did you do?” Josh asked. The lawyer, always the lawyer.
“I couldn’t… he couldn’t be dead here. Not with the email, and… god, there are people who would happily see my demise, you have no idea.”
“Oliver, I have no idea what you’re saying right now,” Brody said.
“He moved him,” I said, voice stoic, the room gone cold. “You found Ian here, and you moved him.” I could barely get the words out. But my accusation hit the mark.
I stepped back, hand to the couch, to steady myself. I couldn’t breathe.
Of course Oliver couldn’t stand to be here. Didn’t want to be here alone, with the ghost of Ian haunting him. Didn’t want us cooped up in this place. Always getting us out, out, out.
“You would’ve done the same,” Oliver said, directing it at all of us, I supposed. An accusation for an accusation. And who could say? It’s what we believed about one another, at the core.
“Where…” I said, though I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. I hadn’t known the details of his death. They hadn’t been specified in his obituary. I had just assumed he’d been at home.
“I carried him to his car—it was the middle of the night. He had gotten so skinny, so light, you know?” As if we hadn’t all noticed that Ian had been gradually disappearing, for years. “Drove him back to the mainland, this rest area where I knew people would sleep sometimes…” Oliver said.
“No,” I cut in sharply. “Where did you find him.”
His throat moved, like he was working his way up to it. Remembering. “Downstairs,” he said. “My room.”
I sucked in a breath, imagining Ian there. Lying in bed, lifeless. The shell of him, this person I had once loved. Who I had cared for, for much longer.
But I shook my head. Would he have taken Oliver’s room, if he had the house all to himself? I couldn’t picture it. He’d loved that upstairs space, and I’d found his jacket in there…
“Oliver, are you sure it was Ian who sent you that email?”
“What do you mean?” Grace said.
“I mean, someone used Ian’s phone to get me here. Texted me from his number, and then I found the phone, washed up on the beach.”
Someone sucked in a gasp. Silence hung in the air as the realization sank in.
Each and every one of us had been lured here.
“What?” Hollis finally said, incredulous.
“I found out after. That number that I showed you that had texted me? It was Ian’s. And his phone was on the beach.”
It was getting dark, and I could feel the fear in the room. Like we were trapped on the edge of a river, around a flare, slowly dying. The lights in the house did nothing to ease my rising panic. It felt like we were a beacon in the night—not to be saved, but to be trapped.
“I thought it was a suicide,” Oliver said, throat moving. And what he had left unspoken: that he had made sure Oliver would be the one to find him. Such a heavy burden to bear.
“Can you check which email address he wrote you from, Oliver?” Grace asked, but he was already shaking his head.
“I deleted it,” Oliver said. “Wiped it. Didn’t want evidence tying us together…”
“The camera. Is there any way to see who can access it?” Hollis asked.
Josh shook his head. “No, I mean, the only thing we’d be able to check is if someone is on the same Wi-Fi who shouldn’t be…”
“Then who the fuck has been watching us?” Brody asked, coiled to snap.
“Oliver,” Grace said, as calmly as possible, though I could hear the tremble in her voice. “Who has access to this house?”
He shook his head, like he was trying to think it through. “The cleaning company. Probably the old rental management place we used to use. I haven’t changed the key code in years, there didn’t really seem like a point. It’s not like there’s anything of value…”
“But still,” Josh said, “most likely someone close.” He was levelheaded, problem-solving. The side of himself he must’ve utilized in a trial.
Someone close.
Right then I got a chill, thinking of Will, of the fact that he was nearby when I’d found Ian’s phone, and he was right there when my bike had a flat. The bike that had been fine until I’d disappeared into the store. And how he was fishing for information on the drive home, gently easing it out of me.
How he seemed to know more about us than I thought possible, pulling that article up at the bar, asking me about it.
“I feel like someone’s been in the house,” Hollis said. “Looking through things…” She cut her eyes to Grace briefly. “I thought it had been you, going through my luggage.”
Grace didn’t object to the accusation, just shook her head firmly. “It wasn’t me.”
Josh’s gaze drifted to the stairwell. I remembered the door left open upstairs, the sound of footsteps out on the deck at night that I’d assumed were his—but it could’ve been anyone.
“Someone’s been watching us,” I said.
“The campgrounds,” Brody said. “Anyone could be staying there. Would be close enough to come over the rocks…”
Oliver’s eyes met mine, and I imagined we were remembering the same thing. The light dancing on the beach at night that had drawn us outside. Heading back to the campground. The same place Amaya had been staying…
“Amaya saw someone,” I said. “She told us, the first day. That someone was on the beach.”
I saw Josh flinch—I wondered if he was remembering too, how he’d brushed her off, mocking her by saying It’s a beach, people do tend to use it… Belittling her.
“She was all alone out there,” Josh said, voice low and gravelly. I pictured Amaya at the campgrounds, thinking she had escaped something—suddenly finding herself in danger instead.
Everything was coming out now. We had always been so careful and quiet. Not willing to accuse, lest we be accused in return. There was a balance, and there were too many ways we could tip.
“It could also be her,” Brody said. “She said she was at the campgrounds… Maybe she was staying close to keep an eye on us…”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think she saw something—or someone—and ran.”
“Well, if she did, she didn’t care enough to warn the rest of us. So excuse me if I think she’s the one behind this,” Brody said.
But I didn’t think Josh believed that anymore.
I pulled the letter from my bag. Block print, folded like a card. “She left this in our room.”
GET OUT NOW
I watched them each, slowly taking it in.
“You didn’t think this was important to share?” Hollis asked, grabbing the paper. Her blue eyes widened, hollow shadows visible underneath.
“I only just found it. The wind must have swept it under the bed. And I didn’t know who she was running from.”
“And she only cared about you?” Brody asked, like the idea was so ridiculous. “She didn’t say anything when she texted later that day?”
Oliver laughed, low and surprising. “Oh. You thought she was running from one of us?”
I didn’t answer. I had, of course I had.
But look at all the secrets we had kept. Ian, dead in this house. Oliver, who found him, and was the last person to communicate with him. Josh’s secret relationship with Amaya, and whatever made her leave him. And those were just the ones we’d forced out. I knew, deep down, there were more.
They passed the note around, person to person, as if someone might see something in it that the others did not.
Finally, it ended in Josh’s hand. He stared at it, frowning. Then he smacked the paper down on the table, making us jump. “I’m not sure this is her handwriting,” he said. “Are you?”
We knew a lot about one another in some regards, but so little, in other ways. Had she ever written me a note before? Had she written one to Josh?
“How should we know?” Brody asked, but Josh was looking at me now.
The realization slowly dawned: that maybe this note hadn’t been left by Amaya but for her instead.
GET OUT NOW
I heard an echo of her voice from that night, long ago—something visceral, cutting across time. We have to get out now!
Someone was close by. Someone was watching.
Did they come to see you too?
The whisper in my ear, no longer in Amaya’s gentle voice.
Instead it was a threat. A threat that had sent her running.
“I’m getting out of here,” I said, turning for the stairs.
Oliver grabbed my arm as I passed. “We’ll go in the morning,” he said, like he was in charge.
“I’m going now,” I said.
“It’s not safe out there right now. And the road is closed. There’s nowhere to go.”
“I don’t care,” I said. How could they stay, when everything within me was begging me to run?
“We have to stay together,” Oliver said, voice rising. This whole week, trying to keep us as a group, move us as a pack. Like there was safety in numbers. Yes, he had understood the danger from the start. “We survived,” he added, “because we stayed together.”
I shook my head. How could he forget? Revise our history, excise the people who had not made it out? The ones we left?
“So come with me,” I said. I could not stay here, in this place where Ian had died. I could not stay, when Amaya was also gone, and there was a note in our room, and a camera set up to watch us. How could any of them? I looked from person to person, waiting. I remembered that night, Amaya telling us: We have to move. We have to go. The pull of her words. The force of them. A decision I’d already believed, deep in my core, but needed someone else to make for me.
And yet, tonight, one by one, they looked away. When I climbed the stairs, I was alone.
I organized my gear as quickly as possible. I put that necklace on, a tie to home, a promise to my future. And then, on instinct, I called Russ. I wanted someone to know where I was. I wanted to confess. What did I have to lose?
“Cassidy, hey,” he said, like this was a happy surprise.
“I lied,” I said, voice shaking, desperate. “I’m sorry, I’m not in New York. I’m in the Outer Banks.”
There was a beat of silence, while the words processed. “You’re where?” he asked, as if he needed me to confirm it.
“In the Outer Banks. I’ve been coming here for years. It’s a long story. But it’s a promise I’ve kept to a group I’ve known for the last decade.” A pause. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how to explain… But I have to get out of here.”
Another long pause, while I considered my options. I dropped my luggage on top of the bed.
“Cassidy? I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, but something’s not right, someone’s been watching…”
I was losing the track, losing my focus. I started throwing my things into the bag, not thinking. Ian’s phone. Ian’s jacket. “It doesn’t matter.”
The line crackled, like I was losing the connection. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Cassidy. But wherever you are, I can come to you. I can start driving now.”
I closed my eyes—isn’t this what I’d always wanted, always hoped for? Someone to choose me. To choose to save me.
“No, it’s okay. The roads are a mess. You won’t make it… I just wanted you to know the truth. I’m going to come home. I’m getting out of here as soon as the roads are clear.”
The toiletries went in next, and then the chargers, disconnected from the outlets.
Another crackle of the line, like I was too far away—in another world, another dimension. “You’re scaring me, Cassidy.”
“I’ll explain when I’m home. I promise.” And then I hung up, connection severed.
I finished tossing everything inside. I did what I should’ve done from the start, when Amaya left. When Ian’s phone turned up in my hand.
I grabbed my keys, hooked my bag on my back, and opened the door.
Grace stood just across the entrance to my room, eyes wide. There was a bag in her hand, another on her back. “Please,” she said, looking back down the hall once. “Get me the fuck out of here.”
“Gladly,” I said. Grace had no car of her own here. The last few years, she’d flown into the nearest airport, which was still over an hour away—needing to take an expensive cab ride the rest of the way.
Grace stopped at the entrance to the yellow room before heading downstairs. “Hollis,” she called, but Hollis was perched on her bed, staring out the window. “Hollis, come on, we’re going.”
Grace spoke to Hollis the same way she used to handle Clara, guiding her, directing her, the more dominant personality.
“I don’t want to drive in this,” Hollis said.
“Then come with us,” Grace said. “Leave the car. Figure it out later.”
But Hollis was not easily swayed. “I’ll go tomorrow, with the rest of them.”
We left her there, then passed the guys, still downstairs gathered around the dining room table with the camera between them, like they were convening in secret.
They stopped whatever they were discussing as we passed, watching us.
“Don’t do this,” Brody said, as we headed for the exit. “It’s not safe.”
I stopped at the door. “You should all get out. Right now.”
It took only until we reached the end of our unpaved road for me to start second-guessing myself. If we couldn’t get out of town, we’d be trapped with no other options. But having Grace beside me urged me forward. She too understood the danger. She too had decided to go.
We drove past the sign warning of an upcoming road closure. Eventually, I could see the barriers ahead. I pulled up almost flush with the blockade, as if I had to get as far as I possibly could.
There were two orange-and-white-striped blockades, weighted down with sandbags. And a sign attached to both, clearly indicating ROAD CLOSED, just in case that wasn’t clear enough. A plow was parked off to the side of the road, at the edge of the dunes.
A fine mist hung in the air, visible in the headlights. A tunnel of darkness snaked between the dunes, past the place we could see.
“Will said they had cleared the road, mostly,” I said.
“Well,” Grace said, taking a deep breath. “One way to find out.”
She stepped out of the car, and I followed wordlessly. The barriers were not difficult to move, especially with the two of us. We opened up the right lane, a darkness yawning.
Back in the car, I turned on the high beams, and slowly crossed the divide. We didn’t stop once—not even to replace the barrier.
We knew how to escape:
You left when you could. And you didn’t look back.
Neither of us spoke as we traversed the closed section of highway that would bring us to the next town, closer to the bridges connecting us to the mainland, not sure what we would find or whether we’d become stuck somewhere in between. There was a thick grit under the tires, like we were driving across a layer of the encroaching beach that had spread over the road. But I could just make out the tire tracks of the plow that must’ve come through earlier, so I tried to keep the same path, the comfort of dark highway pavement visible in the tread marks.
Eventually, we came to another set of barriers, and Grace and I repeated the process of unblocking the lane.
We were free. We had made it.
Grace started laughing as we pulled into the next town. “Never thought I’d be so happy to see that roadside fish shack. And yet.”
“And yet,” I agreed, driving past the darkened storefront windows.
Just before the first bridge, another set of lights appeared in the rearview mirror. Grace spun around in the seat. “Do you think one of them followed us?” she asked.
“I think they would’ve let us know,” I said.
Grace checked her phone, frowning.
The car remained behind us as we crossed the bridge. I kept checking the mirror, but it wasn’t like there were many options for driving here. If someone was heading out, they’d have to follow us just about the whole way.
I tried to relax by counting the series of bridges, one by one, tracing our path back home. After the final bridge, there was a long expanse of road, with marshlands on either side. I pulled abruptly into the first gas station on the mainland, then watched as the car behind us continued on. I noticed Grace following the car with her gaze too.
I tried to shake off the paranoia—we were out. We were free. I topped off the tank, before slipping back into the car beside Grace.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked. She’d flown in from Atlanta, but the airport was in the other direction from where I was heading, and I was sure the storm had thrown the schedule into chaos; there’d be no flights for her tonight.
“Let’s just get as far as we can,” she said.
Grace offered to split the driving, so we switched seats after another hour, the darkness and monotony of the scenery a dangerous lull. It was getting late, and the road was mostly unlit and unoccupied, except for the rare car that would suddenly appear in our mirrors, and then disappear.
I must’ve dozed off in the passenger seat, because I jolted awake to a sudden light and the sound of a door latching shut.
I was alone in the car, but the keys were still in the ignition, engine running. I oriented myself slowly—an empty parking lot, a convenience store—and realized we were just at another gas station.
We were alone in the lot, except for one other car parked against the side of the building, probably belonging to a person working inside.
Grace was visible inside the small store, speaking to the man behind the register as he rang up her purchase. She checked her phone as she walked my way, then smiled when she opened the door and saw I was awake.
“There’s a good place to stay about five miles up the road. Want to stop?”
It was almost midnight, and we were far enough inland that I couldn’t hear the sea or smell the salt in the air.
No one knew where we were. I checked my phone, but no one had tried to contact me. It was a different type of isolated, a different type of safe.
“Yes,” I said. “Good plan.”